canon rumors FORUM

After reading many mediocre reviews I wasn't sure about getting this lens. There aren't many other choices in the same price range so I decided to just get it. I'm somewhat of a pixel peeper and I am happy with this lens. Awesome lens. Especially on full frame.

I've been on the fence about this lens for a while.... Is it actually good on a full frame camera? Or does it just reveal all of it's weaknesses? It looks beautiful on a crop.

It's a bit of both. I don't use mine much now, since getting the 5D MkII and more recently the 24 MkII, but the reason is as much that I find it a bit wide for my style on full frame and issues with using square/rectangular filters as image quality. At f/16 it is visibly softer across the field, but the corners really show up the lens when using full frame. That said, when I do use it, it is usually for an extreme effect and there is little else that can achieve that. I can't remember if it was earlier in this thread or elsewhere, I posted one such extreme effect, emphasising the distortion, which also showed its other weaknesses of corner softness, CA and flare.

There is some corner softness wide open, but at f/8 improves a lot and is on par with the 16-35mk.ii at that aperture.

Wide open the 16-35mk.ii has better corner resolution. For the money it is a great lens at about 50% the price of the 16-35.

Even at F4, it is pretty usable as far as resolution goes... here's a shot I took of it at F4 ... gives you an idea of using it wide open on FF, you can see the corner softness, but the image otherwise tells the story you want to tell.